Slashdot Mirror
Hedge Fund Offers $2 Billion For Novell
CWmike writes "A hedge fund that is already one of Novell's largest shareholders offered on Tuesday to acquire the struggling, cash-rich enterprise software maker for $2 billion. The unsolicited offer, from New York-based Elliot Associates L.P., is for $5.75 per share in cash, a dollar per share more than Novell's closing price Tuesday of $4.75. The offer caused Novell's stock to leap 29% to $6.15 in after-hours trading. Because Novell is so cash-rich — it had $991 million in cash and equivalents at the end of January (PDF) — Elliott says the deal values Novell as an enterprise alone at about $1 billion."
I expect that this will be tied up in the Canadian court system for a bit as well. I work a few kms from the former Nortel campus here in Ottawa and Nortel has been in the news for the past few months as it pensioners are basically receiving nothing as the company short funded the pension and eventually claimed bankruptcy. I fully expect that the legal team representing Nortel pensioners will do everything in their power to have a say in what happens to this company and should it be sold have existing pension liabilities settled.